Union

This week, hundreds of Chicago workers organized a major labor strike, demanding a wage floor of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Their protests come on the heels of the largest strike in the fast food industry's history, which took place in December in New York City, and a nation-wide Walmart strike to protest what workers felt were unfair wages and treatment. Here in Baltimore, workers have also begun organizing around the idea of "fair development" - calling for higher wages and other benefits.

In case no one has noticed it yet, two-thirds of Towson University's past and current student body is and remains white. The current and past regime's mantra of "inclusion" and "diversity" is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to disenfranchise the whites. This includes the recent Title 9 female over male baseball mess that the current TU president botched. TU is fine with all new ideas, just as long as they are theirs. During 1970-72 as an elected Student Government Association senator, I stood behind the effort to form a Black Student Union.

It's the old "fair share" argument, but this time it holds even less water than usual. The Maryland State Education Association, the union that bargains on behalf of K-12 teachers throughout Maryland, wants to force all teachers — members or not — to pay union dues. The union claims educators owe their "fair share" because it must represent non-union members in collective bargaining and grievances. At the moment, 10 of Maryland's 24 school districts already require non-union teachers to pay union dues.

The Baltimore principals union is calling for schools CEO Andrés Alonso to pay back thousands of dollars in bonuses he received in years that schools were later found to have cheated on state tests. The request comes as a contract, released through a Public Information Act request, names three schools that have not previously been publicly linked to cheating suspicions: Sinclair Lane Elementary, Rayner Browne Elementary/Middle and William Pinderhughes Elementary. The schools join Abbottston Elementary, alleged to have cheated in 2009, in an independent investigation.

The "average" federal employee salary is nearly $78,500, an amount that has risen by about $1,800 in the past two years despite a general freeze on salary rates, according to the Office of Personnel Management. As of September, OPM reported last week, the average salary for a full-time, permanent, non-seasonal position was $78,467. The comparable figure for December 2010 was $76,701. The latest available median salary is $74,714, up from $69,550 in 2010. Federal employees did not receive the traditional across-the-board January raises in 2011, 2012 or 2013.

Labor unions representing federal employees reacted angrily to the $3.8 trillion budget unveiled Wednesday by President Barack Obama, who proposed trimming $20 billion from federal retirement benefits - reopening a debate many Democrats felt had been resolved last year. The 2014 spending plan - which arrived months late - would reduce annual budget deficits by an additional $1 trillion over a decade, according to the administration's estimates; raise the federal minimum wage to $9; curb Social Security spending; increase the federal cigarette tax and close tax loopholes the Obama administration has pursued for years without success.

APG Federal Credit Union honored Louise Oldland, operations analyst, in February with an award for 25 years of dedicated service to the credit union. In 1987, Oldland was hired as a teller at APGFCU's Aberdeen Proving Ground branch and was later promoted to support services representative. Since then, Oldland has held positions as member service representative and administrative assistant. In her current role as operations analyst, information technology, Oldland is responsible for identifying, prioritizing and resolving issues within APGFCU's technological infrastructure.

The weekend tweets from the Baltimore Police Department featured a recruiting video, an appeal reminding domestic violence victims that officers can help, and a message honoring a colleague who died 40 years ago. But when a fatal stabbing at the Inner Harbor went unmentioned on Twitter by the city agency, police union president Robert F. Cherry decided police weren't making the most of their 140 characters. So the Fraternal Order of Police lodge used its own Twitter account to criticize the police tweets on Sunday night, calling them "public relations propaganda" and saying major crimes too often go unmentioned because "police don't want you to know everything.

The Baltimore County police union says county officials have ignored a ruling by the state's highest court to reimburse some 400 retired Police Department employees for overpaid insurance premiums. A Maryland Court of Appeals decision in November required the county to reimburse the employees for wrongful deductions, but in a motion filed Friday in county Circuit Court, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 4, says it hasn't happened. The union estimates the county owes retirees $572,887.10 through May 2011.

As thousands of federal workers prepare to be furloughed, many are concerned about how to deal with a pay cut. Keith Everett, a chief steward with the American Federation of Government Employees, said his union held two meetings in recent weeks at Fort Meade for workers, many of whom had the same financial questions: Can I apply for unemployment benefits? Will I receive back pay if lawmakers eventually reach some agreement on budget cuts? The answers: No and no. "Everyone is hoping [lawmakers]